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 curated by Francesca Referza
Wednesday 5th October 2011 Velan will inaugurate VERSUS XVII, curated by Francesca Referza, with: Cristian CHIRONI, Danilo CORREALE, Giacomo DE VITO, Giovanni OBERTI, Paride PETREI, Luca RESTA. At its Seventeenth edition, Versus confirms its purpose of confronting young artists whose works mix different languages such as painting, sculpture and video installation. Versus is a regular event in the calendar by Velan Contemporary Art Center in Turin. The word versus in English signifies an opposition between two subjects while in Latin language, as an adverb, versus indicates a direction and means towards.
- And I chose this second meaning in the exhibition project 2011 – writes the curator in the catalogue – by selecting six Italian artists, Cristian Chironi, Danilo Correale, Giacomo de Vito, Giovanni Oberti, Paride Petrei and Luca Resta, coming from different places, backgrounds and using different languages. We had the intention of partially presenting a kind of Italian research which shows manifold and kaleidoscopic perspectives in a common point of view. Cristian Chironi presents Cutter, a project including a performance and several artist books, in the exhibition only the artist books are presented. A series of heterogeneous and fascinating volumes about nature where the artist has cut away all the things we are losing forever (plants, animals, landscapes). All what remains, in the progressive overlaying of pages takes the aspect of a surprising painting-collage in progress. Danilo Correale, tracking the Philosopher Pietro Barcellona, analyzes the depressing adrift of Italian society underlying the great diffusion of games and the many forms of giveaway, designed to be part of the contemporary media world and transformed by a software in a coloured and hypnotic mandala symbolizing the new opium of a population passed from the countryside society of the years after the war a society based upon compulsive consumption. Giacomo de Vito takes us back to tradition by using painting. Nevertheless his painting turns out to be a place of deformation. Masks, then, painted with bright colours and strong lines, transforming in a powerful and original way the traditional idea of the portrait. Giovanni Oberti presents two works, different in material and form but still strictly connected: Untitled (8), Hourglass (Spectator, time, space, surface). A neon light the first and a graphite sculpture “drawn” on the wall, the second. The theme in both works is clearly time (and vision). A typical idea of the speculation about mankind and therefore internal to all art history. Oberti reflects about art in a personal and minimal way. Sometimes extremely glacial, sometimes, on the contrary, soaked with the patina of time and warmed up by the filter of memory. Paride Petrei presents two large papers of insects drawn with a pen according to entomologic descriptions but without using the study of live models. Paride Petrei’s research results often in a poetic philosophic reflection about the relationship between man (and therefore architecture) and nature. The artist defines, each time in a different way, a sort of parallelism between the seemingly perfect mechanisms in animal world and the imperfect ones in man’s society. Petrei formulates thus hypothesis peculiar for their underlying intellectual rigour which represents a large part of his work. Luca Resta presents Lego, an installation where the childish attitude to playing becomes a reflection about economy and current affairs, rendered with the use of metal to represent coins. This playful sculpture – explains the artist – by modifying the material transforms itself and turns out to be the metaphor of our relationship to an object which, like a house, in origin a right to everyone, in time has become an element of enrichment and speculation forcing people to suffer this as a matter of fact. In the occasion of the Seventeenth edition of Versus Vezio Tomasinelli, founder and historical manager of Velan, intended to renew the idea of catalogue. No more a collection of text and images, but a live and extremely personal instrument which every artists, in this first re-edition, has freely reinvented in a personal way.
The artists:
Cristian Chironi (Nuoro, 1974), lives and works between Orani (Nu) and Bologna
Danilo Correale (Napoli, 1982), lives and works between Milan and Naples
Giacomo de Vito (Milano, 1976), lives and works in Turin
Giovanni Oberti (Bergamo, 1982), lives and works in Milan
Paride Petrei (Pescara, 1978), lives and works between Pescara and Rome
Luca Resta (Bergamo, 1982), lives and works between Bergamo and Milan
We thank the artists and: Enrico Fornello, Milan; Massimo Greco, Turin; Cesare Manzo, Pescara, Rome; Galleria Raucci/Santamaria, Naples, Xing/Raum, Bologna. We thank: Regione Piemonte. The exhibition will remain open from 5th to 28th October 2011 from Tuesday to Friday from 4.00 pm to 7.00 pm
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